1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of compression technology. More specifically, the present invention relates to the compression of text messages on a per semantic component basis while maintaining a degree of human readability in the messages.
2. Background and Related Art
Computing devices take a wide variety of forms. An early computer is often termed a “mainframe” computer system. These mainframe computers performed relatively simple processing tasks by today's standards, yet they were useful given the alternatives available at that time. One disadvantage of the mainframe computer was its size and expense. Often mainframe computers occupied entire rooms and were so expensive that users were often forced to share time on the computer with many other users. Computers were, at that time, a scarce commodity.
As semiconductor processing technology developed, the personal desk-top computer became widely available. Desk-top computers are still available as one of many alternative computing devices available to consumers. Desk-top computers are advantageous over early mainframe computers because of their reduced size and expense. In addition, despite the reduced size and expense, the processing and memory power of conventional desk-top personal computers is much greater than their larger, more expensive, mainframe ancestors.
Currently, there are a wide variety of powerful computing devices available on the market. For example, lap-top computers, cellular and digital phones, personal digital assistants, and pagers may each have some degree of processing power and memory. Some of these devices are highly portable and each may have the ability to display information and receive information over a hardwired and/or wireless network. Thus, information is becoming increasingly available regardless of the location of the user.
One common form of information that is often displayed on this wide variety of computing devices is text. However, this wide variety of computer devices has a wide variety of screen sizes and resolution. Some devices such as cellular and digital telephones are very limited in the amount of text that can be displayed as compared to lap-top or desk-top computers. In order to increase the usefulness of the smaller screens in displaying text, often the text is compressed before display on the smaller screens. This compression is made while attempting to retain as much human readability of the text as possible.
However, sometimes, some areas of the text are characteristically more important to a reader than other areas of the text. The text may also have a certain semantic context within the message. Furthermore, the text may have a number of characteristics depending on location within the text message. For example, some text may flow naturally in natural language expressions (such as the body of an e-mail message), while other text does not (such as the From header in the e-mail message). However, conventional text compression technologies do not perform different compression processes taking these semantic issues into consideration. Therefore, what are desired are methods, systems, and computer program products for compressing text with more awareness of the semantic context of the text in the text message while retaining a degree of human readability of the message.